Under the Sky
by chutzpah
Summary: When the rain finally stops. (FuumaxKamui)


Disclaimer: I don't own X/1999, I'm not making any financial/material profit from this piece of fanfiction, and no infringement is intended. In other words, please don't sue.

_Under the Sky_

The rain pours down in heavy sheets, the kind that soaks you through to the bone in a mere heartbeat, that leaves your hair plastered to your skull and your eyes too wide, too large. There's something about rain like that, that leaves people bare, vulnerable. It slicks your clothes to your skin and your emotions to your face, smoothes out the lines of lies and deceptions, so that the truth is just as stark as those hopelessly confused violet eyes.

Inside, it's warm, but not too warm, not warm enough to make the moisture hang heavy in the air in layers of humidity, but warm enough that his skin is drying off. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that he left his wet shoes and socks by the door, and his clothes hadn't taken long to follow them.

Warm hands, warm skin, warm lips tracing a slow path up the line of his throat and across the bare curve of his shoulder, banishing the cold far better than the dull hum of the heater does.

Wide violet eyes, rain-wet and tear-spilling, and that desperate kind of hope settled across pale, rain-slicked features. Rain leaves everything bare, washes it all away, leaves only solid facts and slick skin.

He had been shivering, wet clothes clinging and baggy in turns, water fairly puddling on the floor around his feet. Dark hair plastered to his skull and around his face, revealing the delicate fragility of his face, his expression. In a way, he thought, that fragility was a lie. It was impressive, then, that the rain hadn't just washed it away along with everything else.

Teeth scrape the exposed line of his throat, and he fights to arch up into that touch, despite the strong hands pinning him to the sofa. He's sprawled out across the cushions, bare skin against some sort of velvety fabric, utterly naked, and of course his counterpart is fully clothed and crouched over him, lips and teeth and tongue tracing delicate, sometimes painful patterns across his thin chest.

Rain leaves everything bare and stark and naked, and Kamui is naked and bare and there's no pretences right then, because he's been soaked through and washed away, and because Fuuma's kissing his throat and Fuuma's dry and Fuuma's dressed and so maybe, just maybe, Fuuma might still be pretending.

Thunder rolls almost directly overhead, rumbling through his bones and muscle the way Fuuma's purr does, although the latter is infinitely more sexual, usually muffled into the curve of his throat or the bare line of his hip, a tease and a promise, and in some way, a threat.

Fuuma hasn't spoken once. He didn't speak when he opened the door and found Kamui standing there, bedraggled and soaked and /that/ close to tears, and he didn't speak when Kamui slipped off his shoes, and he didn't speak when he removed Kamui's clothes, tossing them aside carelessly, and he didn't speak when he pushed Kamui down into the couch cushions, and he didn't speak when he straddled Kamui, and he didn't speak when he started kissing Kamui, and so maybe, just maybe, Kamui thinks that Fuuma isn't pretending right now.

Fuuma's eyes are like slits of amber light, amber mirror; unreadable and filled with that kind of cold heat that a leopard's have, heat that isn't warm but heat nonetheless. Kamui's eyes are wide and almost-violet, betraying almost everything he feels. The phrase 'eyes are the windows to the soul' was created for Kamui.

When Fuuma's mouth closes around him, Kamui keeps his eyes open and fixed on the ceiling, on the play of the light through the rain that filters across it. He had closed his eyes once, and Fuuma had hit him so hard that Kamui's lip had split, and when Sorata asked afterwards, he'd had to say that he'd bitten it during a nightmare.

Kamui didn't ask why. Kamui never asks why. Afterwards, when they had curled up together under a pile of blankets, and Fuuma began to lick the sticky blood away and soothe away the soreness with gentle lips, that had been answer enough.

Fuuma sliced Kamui's arm open once, elbow to wrist, when they were fighting the way the _kamui_ are supposed to fight, and Kamui hadn't gone to see him afterwards, the pain too fresh, the blood too fresh, for him to be able to stomach seeing Fuuma just then. Then he woke up to find Fuuma leaning over him, and his shirt in tatters, and Fuuma's mouth on the wound, coaxing away the scab and cleaning away the fresh blood, and Kamui thought that maybe he should scream, because Fuuma hadn't gagged him, and Fuuma was biting gently into the soft skin of his arm, but he didn't scream, because Fuuma hadn't gagged him, and that meant something, no matter how small.

Fuuma liked to touch Kamui's injuries, he had noticed, to lick away the blood and kiss the bruises, as if to make it all better again. Sometimes it was deliberate; Fuuma's eyes fixed on his face as he licked at the blood on Kamui's abdomen, slowly, so slowly, and then as he trailed his mouth lower, languid and predatory, and Kamui just had to watch him until the pleasure spiked and he had to throw his head back, writhing up against Fuuma and re-opening the wound across his stomach.

Sometimes it wasn't so deliberate; an absent kiss smoothed over a bruised shoulder, cheek rubbing against his wrenched arm, and Kamui felt a sudden flutter of desperate warmth in his stomach, a love so potent it hurt more deeply than anything Fuuma could consciously inflict on him.

The rain makes everything unreal, and real again, unravelling every web of lies and making each petty pretence stand out the way a spiderweb on the grass does after a frost. The rain washes away the blood, and the dirt, and the dust, and leaves behind the fact of the thing. Kamui had stood outside and let it pound down on him, opened his arms to the storm's embrace, let it wash the blood off his arms and his hands and let it soak through his t-shirt and jeans.

Then he had gone walking, walked until his legs hurt, and his heart hurt, and everything hurt with the dull pain of a fading bruise, but this was a fresh pain, an empty, hollow ache of betrayal and hopelessness, and he had found himself outside Fuuma's door without even realising it, and then Fuuma had been looking down at him, eyes unreadable and blank, but Kamui knew Fuuma had understood, even if he didn't speak, didn't say anything as he opened the door a little wider, and Kamui stepped into the room, and started crying.

Raw, gasping sobs, vomited up from somewhere deep inside, and Fuuma hadn't touched him, hadn't held him, but hadn't moved away when Kamui wrapped his arms frantically around Fuuma's waist and pressed his face desperately into the warmth of Fuuma's body, sobs torn out from somewhere deep inside, and then Fuuma had touched his hair, very lightly, and just let him cry, one hand resting lightly against Kamui's soaked hair.

He's dry, skin starting to warm finally, and Fuuma's still crouched between his thighs, one finger trailing lazily over the scars there, amber gaze fixed on nothing in particular while he waits for Kamui to come back to himself. He's quiet inside, quiet and calm and that horrible emptiness has been washed away by the rain and by Fuuma's lips and Fuuma's hands and Fuuma's warmth, and it's nothing but quiet and calm inside now.

He watches Fuuma, watches the way the dark spikes of hair tumble across his forehead, watches the way that distant gaze suddenly snaps back into focus, as if Fuuma could feel the weight of his gaze, and Fuuma watched him just as much as Kamui watched Fuuma.

Heat that didn't burn, cold that didn't freeze, hands that tore his skin and then soothed it in turn, teeth that sunk into his shoulder, and lips that trailed delicately up the side of his neck. Violence and worship in turns, and Kamui watched Fuuma, and Fuuma watched Kamui, and outside the rain pounded down and the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed, and the weight of Kamui's tears dried on his cheeks. And then Fuuma shifted, and Fuuma licked away his tears, and Kamui let him, let him lick away the tears, let him clean away the pain and the misery.

Outside, the rain finally stopped.


End file.
